Category Archives: Music

I won’t say I’m an art lover, that would be something of an exaggeration. I do, however, have quite a few framed prints, posters and flyers on my walls, more than a few, in fact, and while none of them are high art, they all have meaning for me.

Some are quirky, like the spoof L.P. cover showing four images of Jurgen Klopp mimicking the cover of Kraftwerk’s classic album “The Man Machine”, re-titled “The Gegenpresser”, (here’s the original)

or the ink drawing of Cthulhu in the style of Edward Gorey. Some are important, like the poster of Bill Shankly holding a red flag over his head, honouring Liverpool fans. Some are music related, such as the fake Clash concert poster, with my band as one of the supporting acts. Actually, it is a poster for a real concert altered to spec. Apparently I pushed Vic Goddard and the Subway Sect off the bill.

Having read “Publikation” by David Buckley a couple of months ago I went on a bit of a Kraftwerk bender, playing their music as I walked to and from work for the best part of two weeks. In fact, during my recent period of mental turmoil, the only thing keeping me sane was a Kraftwerk track playing in a loop in my head ( subject of an upcoming post). I decided to take a look on Etsy.com and came across a framed print of the cover to Autobahn, taken from a high end art book.

I duly ordered said print and awaited it’s arrival. I’m fortunate that the local post office is on my daily route, so about a month ago I stopped in on my way home from work in order to check my P.O. box, hoping to find a slip announcing that my print was awaiting pickup at the counter. Guess what?

I’ll tell you. My box was full, mostly with junk mail, but bent double and crammed into the box was a large Manila envelope. Can you guess what was in it? Again, I’ll tell you, but I reckon you already know. I had to work hard to get the envelope out of the box as it was jammed in, but with some effort I got it free. I’m not a violent man, but I nearly went full Incredible Hulk at that moment. You see, the envelope that had been so violently forced into my mail box was indeed, the print I had ordered. Clearly printed on the envelope in red capital letters was the phrase “PLEASE DO NOT BEND”. Not exactly a proposition from Wittgenstein, to paraphrase Basil Fawlty. Yet the fucking genius who had last handled said envelope had managed to bend three layers of card in order to get it into my mail box. This wasn’t some half arsed home made effort, but a purpose made mailer with a stiff cardboard back, as well as the print and the card frame, so it would have taken quite a bit of effort to bend it.

You can’t even begin to understand just how angry I was, and I am glad I didn’t encounter anyone on my way home, as a single word would have been enough to set me off. Let me show you what I had in my possession when I got home.

See what I mean? How I managed to sleep that night I’ll never know. Of course, I took it to the Post Office in order to lodge a complaint. The alleged adult in charge did a good job, but not a thoroughly convincing one of feigning remorse, and blamed it on a “new trainee”, presumably an illiterate one who doesn’t understand spoken English. She gave me her email and a number to call, and I left very much less than satisfied. Cut to the chase: because the sender didn’t buy insurance, I’m fucked.

I emailed the manager and the seller, but answer came there none. To say that I’m unhappy about this is the understatement of the millennium. I didn’t expect the seller to do anything, as she’s already been paid, but an acknowledgement and expression of sympathy wouldn’t have gone amiss. Of course, I knew the Post Office wouldn’t do anything, despite my further emails, but to misquote Ernestine, one of Lily Tomlin’s finest creations: “The Post Office. We don’t care, we don’t have to”.

The great Alexei Sayle once had a routine that went along the lines of: ” I heard this bloke on the radio the other day going on about how we could all live together in perfect racial harmony on piano keyboards. Well, I’m telling you, pianos aren’t going to solve nothing, no way, no how”

That’s as might be, but late last year a piano was involved in something pretty darn special. Flash back about seven years: For reasons I neither remember nor understand, my then wife and I bought a keyboard at Costco as a Christmas present for the kids. It came loaded with tunes that they could play by simply following along with the book, and I considered it a waste of money, to be honest. The kids and their mum both had some fun with it, and it stayed at that.

However, as my daughter’s interest in all things creative grew, she took up playing the guitar, and began paying more than passing interest in the keyboard, apparently just playing along and following the instructions. She seemed to be doing pretty well, when as luck would have it, the son of the woman who made her spare land available for a community P-Patch (allotment) turned out to be a genius, who later on was accepted into Julliard at 17. My daughter took lessons from him on an informal basis, but eventually he was no longer an option, so her mother signed her up for lessons with a local teacher.

Just before Christmas we were informed that the pupils would be giving a recital for the benefit of the parents, so on the appointed night, I hurried to the teacher’s home and took a seat in the studio. The kids in my daughters’ group ranged from about five to thirteen years old, and as you can imagine, all parents waited with bated breath for their own child to perform. I, of course, was no different, and I have to say that heavily biased as I am, she gave a wonderful performance, playing 5 short pieces. I don’t have the sheet available, but they were not easy pieces, and as she had made the effort to dress for the occasion, my daughter looked every inch the professional musician. As we were departing, her teacher commented on how well she had performed, despite being extremely nervous – apparently one of her legs was shaking almost uncontrollably with nerves during the entire performance. I hadn’t realised this, as my daughter is one of the most confident and self – assured people I know. Of course, I congratulated my daughter profusely, as I found her playing to be flawless, but as I say, I’m not exactly the most unbiased of listeners.

The kicker came when her teacher said that she would like her to perform again, two days later at another of the recital sessions. At this later performance I was seated so I could see her hands and was amazed at the level of dexterity and professionalism she showed. I know this is a dreadfully overused cliche, but her fingers just danced across the keyboard, and I have to admit choking up with pride that she could play with such flourish and elan.

Just to push things even further, a couple of weeks later my ex and I received an email from her teacher saying that she would like my daughter to take an exam from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto some time in May. Bloody hell! This is the institution attended by Oscar Peterson and Glenn Gould!

Lest you think I’m getting ahead of myself, this exam is a test of both ability and progress, and in no way means that she is headed north of the border for schooling, but if she’s good enough to take one of their exams, her teacher must think very highly of her indeed. I honestly don’t know what to make of it all. I’ve always known that she is highly talented and extremely creative, but where the hell she gets it from is beyond me, I mean, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, even if I use both hands. One thing of which I am certain, though is that whatever path she takes, she’s always going to go straight to the top. I’m also certain that I’ll never hear her repeat one of Eric Morecambes’ more famous catchphrases, used when performing one of his musical pieces: “I am playing all the right notes. Just not necessarily in the right order.”

My love of music is well known, see multiple previous posts, but one kind of music just bugs the crap out of me – Christmas music. It is almost exclusively garbage, full of banality, cliche and triteness. Of course, there’s no avoiding it at this time of year, but at least once you leave the store you don’t have to deal with it until you walk into the next one. Nice to have the choice. Imagine having to listen to it for eight hours straight. This is what my life has been like since the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. There’s no avoiding it and it is driving me crazy.

For the first two weeks I was subjected to an endless stream of garbage spewed out by a never-ending stream of third-rate session singers. Do you know just how many versions of ‘Frosty The Snowman” there are? No? about a dozen by my reckoning, and all of them, with the exception of the Cocteau Twins version are dreadful. Imagine listening to each of them about four times each every day. Add in “Jingle Bells” “Winter Wonderland”, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” “Let It Snow” and every other bloody Christmas song you can imagine and you have some idea of the kind of audio hell my life has been.

DTKIC? is by far the worst, especially as one of the singers is doing what I’m going to say is his best to sound like Bono. It’s bad enough when Bono tries to sound like Bono, but I’ve heard better Bono impressions on a Friday night in Dublin after the pubs shut. I won’t even go into the fact that Africa has more Christians than any other continent, so yeah, I guess they do fucking know it’s Christmas. Imagine if Rachid Taha, Abdel Aziz El Mubarak, Cheb Khaled, and other great African singers got together to record a benefit song for Europeans called “Do They Know It’s Ramadan?” I can just imagine the lyrics – “Feeeeed the woooorld, but only between sunset and sunrise”.

But the worst thing of all is that so many of these so-called singers try to rework the songs by slowing them down by about 75%. Have you ever heard an eight minute version of “Jingle Bells” which sounds like the singer has been told to count backwards from ten by the anaesthesiologist. A truly terrible example is the version of “Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree” I had to endure about four times a day. Before I moved over here, I associated the tune “Tannenbaum” with “The Red Flag”, and I can tell you, the Russian Revolution took less time than it took to listen to this song. And then of course, there’s the Vince Guaraldi version from the rarely seen animated classic “It’s the peasants and workers revolution, Charlie Brown”.

Lest you think I’m some kind of Grinch, I’m not, ( See “Fuck Christmas’ to be proven otherwise)although the thoroughly twee and sickening version of “You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch” which misses the point of the song entirely and turns it into a semi-comic joshing is enough to make me decamp to the top of Mount Crumpit. I own two Christmas L.P.s – “It’s A Holiday Soul Party” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, which is just fantastic because, well… it’s Miss Sharon Jones. She does some well-known tunes, but my favourite has to be “There Ain’t No Chimneys In The Projects”. Nuff sed. The other is “Christmas Songs” by Bad Religion, in which they just storm through carols and Christmas favourites at full pace, driven along by a drummer who doesn’t pause for breath.

I only heard my all time favourite Christmas song once, and that was because it was playing on a customers’ car radio as I tied a tree onto the roof. I’m talking of course, about “A Fairytale Of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty McColl. Of course there’s no way the store would play it, presumably because they don’t want complaints from parents who’ve just had their five year old ask “Mum, what’s a cheap, lousy faggot?” Also absent has been Siouxsie And The Banshees’ “Israel”, a classic, and well worth an airing, in my opinion. Last week wasn’t too bad by comparison, as the Tannoy was playing original recordings, but you know that there’s no hope for a song when even Mister Tony Bennett can’t save it.

Add to this the fact that we have had a Salvation Army bell-ringer camped outside for the whole time. It is a torture beyond compare. Send half a dozen of those guys to work at Guantanamo Bay and I guarantee that every inmate will confess to everything from the murder of Julius Caesar onward. It has been doing my head in, having to listen to the constant ringing, and I mean constant, except for the ringers’ breaks and lunch. I can tell you that if we had a longer cable for the electric chainsaw, the parking lot would have been filled with T. V. camera teams. The absolute nadir was last Thursday when we were joined by some carol singers. These guys could actually sing, they sounded fantastic, but the bell ringer kept going, and the store was pumping out its usual programme, and to have all three of these competing sounds going at once was just too much to take. Every man has his breaking point, and I reckon mine was less than a minute away when the carolers departed.

The thing is that due to tingling in my right hand brought about by loading and dragging all those trees I wake up about three or four times a night, and I can’t get back to sleep due to the discomfort and the fact that the songs from work are burned into my brain and have left a multitude of ear worms to torment me. Usually ear worms can be driven out by thinking of a song you like, but I just can’t get any songs I like to stick.

One thing of note has been that a lot of the songs have “Holidays” in the title instead of Christmas, as in “Home For The Holidays”, a song which to the best of my knowledge, along with a number of others, predates the start of Fox News’ bullshit narrative about the non-existent “War on Christmas”. FUCK YOU, SEAN HANNITY. I’d like you to do something for me: turn towards New York and yell at the top of your lungs “FUCK YOU, SEAN HANNITY!”. Again, “FUCK YOU, SEAN HANNITY!!”. Once more “FUCK YOU, SEAN HANNITY!!!”. There, don’t you feel better? I certainly do. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling just screaming the fucking words.

During my regular morning perusal of Theguardian.com I came across a rather depressing story. I know there have been many of late, but this had nothing to do with the daily flood of diarrohea from SCROTUS. On the technology page I read that Apple has stopped making the iPod Nano and Shuffle, the last two stand – alone MP3 players in their catalogue. I am sure that this item didn’t create even the tiniest blip on the personal radars of most people, but it took the edge off my day for a number of reasons.

I should point out that I understand why Apple did this: they want the iPhone to be all things to all people, and want everyone to rely on their little block of plastic, glass and silicon for everything. From an economic perspective it makes sense, as simplifying product lines improves efficiency and simplifies the supply chain, but it left me feeling cold. Let me explain:

I’m an alien. I was born on the planet analogue and for many years lived a conventional life among humans, blending in ( apart from the Aspergers) and getting by. I had a very large vinyl collection, and it gave me great comfort. to quote the band Cornershop, “Everyone needs a bosom for a pillow, mine’s on the 45”, even though it occupied more of my bedroom than I did. I ignored CDs until it was too late,and managed to survive the 90’s by pretty much ignoring contemporary music. My life changed when my then Father In Law bought me a third generation iPod after my then wife asked him what version would be best for my commute. I was faced with the opportunity to put more music in my shirt pocket than I could put in my bedroom, and I embraced it without question. I was stunned, don’t get me wrong, but the ability to hold 30 days of non stop music in my hand was more than I could believe.

In my youth I owned a Walkman. Every Saturday I would have to decide which four tapes I would put into the pockets of my Italian army combat jacket before I took the train into Liverpool to spend my money on music. It was not a simple task: : picking the wrong tape meant I would be stuck listening to something for which I wasn’t in the mood, and let’s face it, that really stinks. The iPod gave me the opportunity to change my mind and to create playlists longer than half a dozen compilation tapes. Lest you think I put my past behind me, think again. I have two large boxes stuffed with C 90 tapes stored in the closet and three, yes, count ’em, three functioning Walkmen, as well as two boom boxes. My first iPod had a duff battery, but the second one lasted well, especially after my son replaced the corrupt hard drive that after almost 10 years finally gave up the ghost. I also bought one of the last generation models, as 160 GB should keep me going for some time, and when I bought it, I regarded my 80 GB model as beyond repair. I also have a couple of shuffles, a 1GB and a newer 2GB model which I used to use exclusively for podcasts on my commute. I could clip the iPod to the headphone cord, and if wearing earbuds, it took up almost no space in whatever bag or Eastern European military map case I happened to be using that day.

It seems to me that the life cycles of electronic devices are getting shorter. We have become as accustomed to the concept of this year’s iPhone model as we have to the idea of this year’s new car model. A practice, I hasten to point out, which began in the 1920’s once sales began to level off. I mean, do we really need a new model phone every year? I’m still using a Galaxy 3, and it serves me darn well. In fact, I don’t even use all the functions, so in some respects, it is more than I need.

Phone batteries have a crappy lifespan, and the fact that I get a weeks’ worth of normal use out of my iPod between charges is something I appreciate. I also appreciate the fact that it is a single function device, and therefore is subject to the inverse law of “The less there is to go wrong, the less there is to go wrong” I now have four devices that should last me a good 20 years between them, and I wonder how many of you can say the same things about your new iPhone? Do you know anyone who still uses a first generation iPhone? No, you don’t.

You’ll have to excuse me. I’m in the mood to listen to some original recordings of Caruso, but I just can’t find the right wax cylinder.

I’ve been putting this one off, as I’ve been somewhat unmotivated of late, but recent events have got me going again. As you may well have realised, music is, and always has been an important part of my life. It has helped my through some pretty rough times, and made the good times even better. All you need to do is take a look at my post titles to work out that music is a constant thread running through my life, but it goes a bit deeper than simply looking for appropriate titles.

I grew up listening to the truly great John Peel and his impish, young sidekick Andy Kershaw on BBC Radio One. Peel is pretty much single-handedly responsible for bringing non-top thirty music to the BBC. As far back as 1977 I can remember him playing the Buzzcocks’ “Spiral Scratch” EP in it’s entirety when no one else at Broadcasting House had even heard of them. He kept on finding great bands and bringing them to the fore, and I can’t even begin to imagine how many tapes I filled over the years as I tuned in from 10 pm to midnight four days a week.

I would go as far as to say that Peelie was responsible for around 90% of my music collection. The bands he turned me towards led to other bands, and so on, in a situation that can only be described as rabbit holes all the way down. Kershaw was very much in the same vein, but with a different approach, and his contribution is not to be dismissed lightly.

Fast forward to 2014. I had finally gotten around to listening to KEXP on a regular basis. I know: I arrived here in 1992 and it took me this long to get round to listening to the only radio station that matters. This is due to a combination of pretty much ignoring new music during the whole of the 90’s and having an iPod. However, my sweetie convinced me to give the station a try, and I was hooked pretty much straight away. Not long afterwards, I awaited with great antici ……………………….pation ( I had to throw in that reference) the arrival of “International Clash Day #3”. I could only listen to the first hour on my way to work, and I was hooked. I heard some more on my way home and determined to preserve the day. This is where a touch of Aspergers helps, in that I copied the playlist into Word and then recreated as much of the playlist as I could – IN THE CORRECT ORDER. Yep. It helped that I had many of the tracks already and found many, many more without having to spend a fortune, and now the playlist sits on my iPod ready whenever I need a blast of great, great music.

It goes beyond that, though. KEXP seem to be imbued with the spirit of John Peel, playing great music, regardless of age or provenance. I will admit that I’ve picked up on so many great acts just by tuning in whenever I get the chance – Tacocat, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Phantogram, Underworld, Los Campesinos, to name but a few. One thing that really helps is that the D.J.s have total control over their shows, so they have the opportunity to react to events without having to get clearance from management or advertisers. This really makes them stand out. For example, in response to news of the Little Orange One’s Muslim ban, they played music from the seven countries affected. They devoted a whole day to the healing effects of music, playing tracks that had meaning to cancer patients and their families, A day given over to LGBTQ artists in support of Gay Pride, a whole day dedicated to the Beastie Boys’ album “Paul’s Boutique”, playing not just each track, but each track sampled for the album, in the correct order. Can you imagine the amount of work involved in tracking down each sample and the track from which it came? They even played “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” followed by “Safe European Home” to kick off an afternoon devoted to British artists the day after the Brexit vote – totally spontaneously and much appreciated by yours truly

This kind of dedication really pays off: Every D.J. really cares about the music, and you can’t help but pick up on the enthusiasm. I’m not a Rockabilly fan by any means, but as “Shake The Shack” is on on Friday evenings, I get to hear quite a bit of the show as I run my daughter to and from her horse riding lessons. I’m never going to splash out on tickets for a concert, but I’ve really come to enjoy the genre – it’s always uplifting, fast paced and often quite humourous. I can see why some people are devoted to it, and I certainly wouldn’t turn the show off.

Being publically funded, they have regular spring and autumn pledge drives – a phrase that strikes dread into the hearts of most pubic radio and T.V. fans. However, not so this year. You see, last autumn I could afford to donate to the station, and felt very happy about it, not least because of the awesome tee shirt and hoodie I received as gifts in return for my donation. Of course, if I can afford it, I will re-up this autumn, and this meant that I didn’t turn the radio off during the pledge breaks.

Considering that the Toxic Revenger has pledged to end all funding for public broadcasting, this makes the pledge drives all the more important, especially for those of us who want to hear more than just cool jazz, young country, oldies or classic rock when we press the ‘on’ button. I mean, where else can you hear Norwegian Rockabilly, Chilean Rap, Portuguese Hip Hop or Mexican Punk? Did you even know those genres exist? You do now!

The end of year review is something of a trope. A chance to look back on the previous 12 months and muse on all that has happened. From newspapers to radio, to television news, everyone wants to get in on the act. Why anyone in their right mind would want to waste the energy of even a single neuron on 2016 is beyond my comprehension, not that it’s going to stop me. Besides, I want to get this done before anything else happens to bring us even lower.

I will gloss over the political aspects of the year, as both Brexit and the U.S. presidential election defy both understanding and reflection. They merely add grist to the mill of the old saw that the search for intelligent life in the universe must continue, as there’s bugger all sign of it on Earth. The theme of this year has been loss, and it is on loss that I wish to dwell. Particularly that of loss in the music world. You may have worked out from oh, every single one of my post titles, that I am a music fan. Music has always been a part of my life, and a damn important one at that, so with no further ado, let’s get to it.

Of course, I have to start with the biggies. There is nothing that I can say about David Bowie that hasn’t been said already and much more eloquently than I could ever manage, but I do have to reflect on the impact the news had on me. I was in a different job then, and had plenty of time to read the online news, so you can imagine my utter shock and disbelief upon reading of Bowie’s passing. Of course, I knew nothing of his illness, and it came like a punch to the solar plexus. A little later that morning, our delivery guy Richard arrived for his regular pick up of boxes, and we just stared at each other in disbelief. He is as big a music fan as I am, and we would regularly chat about our favourite bands and artists whenever he came by. But that day, we just exchanged “WTF?” stares and shook our heads.

There never was, nor will there ever be anyone like Bowie. No one could ever come close to his level of talent, ability for reinvention or originality. Admittedly, I’m not keen on his work from “Let’s Dance” onward ( Black Star excepted), and I never paid attention to Tin Machine, but he left us so many seminal albums that any temporary lapse of genius can be forgiven.

Likewise Prince. I only had the Black Album and a greatest hits tape, but even I could see the genius of the Minneapolis Midget. I know that overdosing is a very rock and roll way to go, but to die as a result of taking prescription meds taken for injuries sustained whilst performing is just too much. Had they been the only musical deaths of the year, that would have been bad enough, but of course, 2016 just hates us, so the list got longer. Again, Motorhead were never my kind of band, but anyone with even minimally functioning hearing – most Motorhead fans, if truth be told – has to admit that “Ace of Spades” and “Bomber” are classic tracks. Lemmy was unmistakable, and whilst certainly no Ginger Baker, Phil Taylor was a ground breaking drummer. His style set the groundwork for thrash metal, and anyone who can kick start a new style, no matter how incomprehensible to most people, has to be accepted as a true talent.

It’s not my intention to catalogue all those we’ve lost, far greater sources have done that: http://blog.kexp.org/2016/12/14/to-those-we-lost-in-2016-part-one/ , but I feel honour-bound to continue. No one would regard Leonard Cohen as a great vocalist, but his distinctive gravel growl combined with his wordsmithing made life much richer for so many people. I don’t begrudge Bob Dylan’s literature Nobel prize, but if Dylan could win one, Cohen should have been hip deep in them. I came to Cohen late in life, but haven’t regretted a second spent listening to him. His death, even though he was a good age really did mark rock bottom in so many ways.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it got worse. Of course it did. What did I expect, that the year would give us a break? How fucking stupid do you think I am? Actually, please don’t answer that last question. On a Friday not too long ago I set off to pick my daughter up from her riding lesson. Of course, the radio was tuned to KEXP and I was delighted to hear Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings’ version of “This Land Is Your Land”. It was too good to be true as just after the song ended, the DJ announced her passing earlier that day. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! You know how in every cartoon Wile E. Coyote will be pummeled by a deluge of rocks or other suitably heavy objects? The torrent stops and a suitably bruised Wile E. pops his head out of the pile only to have one last, immense boulder strike him with great force. Well, this is what it felt like that day.

Sharon Jones was a singer who could give Aretha Franklin a run for her money. I first heard her on “Sound Opinions” and instantly got hold of every item of her back catalogue I could. She was an artist who on first hearing you just knew was a rare talent. I can’t tell you how quickly I wrote down her name- probably before the track was four bars old. Soul music is much, much poorer for her death. As indeed, are we all. She was the special guest at the opening of KEXPs’ new home, and although she and the Dap Kings played for only 30 minutes, it was such an energy packed performance that it could have powered a city for a month. I never had the opportunity to see her perform, and now, I never will. It is one thing that I really regret. Seriously.

Merle Haggard had a long, successful career, and to die at just 74 ( no great age these days) seems cruel. Any man who can start a song with a line like “I turned twenty one in prison doing life without parole” had a lot going for him.

It’s not just music that got hammered this year. Gene Wilder is a talent that can’t be replaced. Just watch any of his films and I dare you not to laugh. “Blazing Saddles” is still funny. Offensive, crude, vulgar for sure, but still a movie to have anyone with a pulse laughing out loud no matter how many times you’ve seen it before. Likewise “The Producers” and “Stir Crazy”. “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory” is still a classic that simply doesn’t age. I’m not a fan of musicals, but that one gets a pass. And of course, who hasn’t thrown the phrase “Actually, it’s pronounced Fronkensteen” into a conversation at least once?

Entering the last week of the year I assumed we were in the clear. Well, you know what they say about what happens when you assume, don’t you? Yeah, I’m talking about Carrie Fisher. My love of “Star Wars” doesn’t reach the level of Fanboy obsession, but having watched all seven episodes, and taken my daughter to see “Rogue One” only two weeks ago, this one really stung. I still remember standing outside the Odeon cinema in Liverpool in 1977 for over two hours waiting for the doors to open.

George Michael was never on my list – I despised Wham and their manufactured corporate style. Still, he did pretty well for himself and to die at 53? It makes me wonder about my own mortality. At 94, I guess it was only a matter of time for Richard Adams, so I can’t feel too upset. Like a lot of people, I read “Watership Down” as a kid, and had the joy of reading it to my son a few years ago. At least he had a full life.

The year still has three days left, so I am a little wary. I wouldn’t put it past 2016 to have one last kick in the balls waiting for us. Has anybody checked on Mick Jagger lately?